Leonardo da Vinci: a genius in the kitchen

We have used to it. After Dan Brown’s and Marco Malvaldi’s Leonardo, we are all somehow “from Vinci”, especially in this year, the anniversary of his death occurred five hundred years ago. We certainly could not miss Leonardo in the kitchen, already proposed in any possible way¹ during the EXPO 2015. Nothing of him gets past us, yet Leonardo is still wrapped in mystery. We know that he was a vegetarian. On the contrary, perhaps he was a vegetarian. Probably even vegan.

Legend has it, through the elusive Romanoff Code (considered by most to be a trick, as the head sculptures by Modigliani), that Leonardo, while at Verrocchio’s workshop, would have worked as a waiter and chef at the trattoria delle Tre Lumache² near the Ponte Vecchio. There, he would propose – ahead of his time – nouvelle cuisine dishes, enchanting guests mainly with pastry making, vegetables and the plating up. They even say that Leonardo had managed a trattoria together with Sandro Botticelli, the trattoria delle Tre Rane³. Leonardo would have invented the Milanese risotto during the painting of the Last Supper. He may have left a list of convivial rules, a kind of etiquette to follow at banquets and even a series of recipes that made envious the most famous chefs of the Renaissance.

In fact, it is known that Leonardo da Vinci not only dealt with art and technical-scientific research, but also spent much of his time organizing and staging large court banquets and parties, both in Milan and in France. Perhaps he also contributed to the design of the related menus. Leonardo’s traces of culinary art are light, almost like Mona Lisa’s smile. We find something in the Atlantic Codex (preserved at the Ambrosian Library in Milan) in which, among notes and drawings of mechanics, anatomy and geometry, there are even some projects to ease a cook’s work: mechanical rotisseries, special ovens… Among some of the most curious kitchen appliances inventions, people have identified a pepper mill inspired by the design of the La Spezia lighthouse, a wind egg slicer, a mechanical rotisserie (namely a spit with rotating propellers that rotate with the heat of the flame). Also, devices and tools to peel and chop ingredients, and objects considered as a predecessor of the corkscrew.

Thanks to the writings left, however, we can assume that Leonardo knew and experimented with herbs and spices among which, turmeric, aloe, saffron, poppy flowers, cornflowers, brooms, mustard oil and linseed oil.

Leonardo also studied how to improve wine production. Expert in botanical studies, he owned a farm in Florence and a vineyard in Milan, given to him by Ludovico il Moro in 1499, immediately after painting the Last Supper. In a famous letter, he explains to his peasant how to improve winemaking production. Leonardo studied raw materials, invented machines and tools for their processing, reasoned about the characteristics of the areas of production, codified regulations for products such as oil, bread and wine. He explored the properties of foods in relation to the health of the body. He wrote fairy tales, “prophecies”, riddles and puzzles inspired by the theme of food, and he realized extraordinary drawings of innovative machines for production. Not to forget the foods in his paintings, starting from the Last Supper.

Some of his memorable (and very modern) annotations remain scattered here and there among almost indecipherable notes.

“King of the animals–– as thou hast described him–– I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest–because thou doest only help them, in order that they give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if I were allowed to speak the entire truth.” (…) “Tell me, now does not nature produce enough simple for thee to satisfy thyself? And if thou art not content with such, canst thou not by mixture of them make infinite compounds, as Platina wrote, and other authors on feeding?”⁴

(Quaderni d’Anatomia II 14 r, housed at the Royal Library of Windsor)

A very particular recipe came to us from the Atlantic Codex. “Sugar, rosewater, lemon and fresh water poured through white cloth: and this is the Turks’ summer drink”

(Atlantic Codex, fol.482r.)This is the only evidence of specific gastronomic interest from Leonardo da Vinci: a “Turkish” and very simple interpretation of rose water, in the form of a drink, probably written around 1517, when he was in France. Ideally, we want to toast him with this aquarosa because we are convinced that if Leonardo had also dealt with recipes, he would certainly have produced something brilliant.

ILARIA PERSELLO

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[1] The expression in any possible way should be translated literally from Italian in all sauces – in tutte le salse – to maintain the original wordplay, impossible in English.
[2] Transl. Trattoria of the Three Snails
[3] Transl. Trattoria of the Three Frogs
[4] Translation taken from Jean Paul Richter The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci – 3rd Edition 1970 (first published in 1883)